At the end of the concert, Mike played his whistle and told how he started in music. The son of a school teacher in Tulsk, County Roscommon, he received a toy whistle to six years. He went to many bike miles to hear great musicians of his time playing in sessions. But he was not allowed to join, even if he had learned many tunes. The whistle was not considered a worthy instrument at the time.
After listening to a session, Mike would ride home along the dark streets on rainy nights, trying to keep the air in his head. Sometimes an elusive melody would pop into his head in the middle of the night, and he was down in the kitchen in the dark, remove the whistle and play the melody when the rest of the house was asleep. That's when his mother knew he would be a musician. "Now I know that all the musicians are crazy," she said.
His big breakthrough came when he was sitting in the shade behind the older players. One day, they could not remember how a certain melody sounds. He reached into his pocket, took out the whistle, and played out of memory. This was his ticket into the royal circle. Someone gave him a flute and he was on his way to 11, he won the All-Ireland competition on the whistle, which is now an instrument of honor in the Irish tradition, and Mike one its greatest masters.
The small picture (about 6x8 inches) was painted in gouache (opaque watercolor), with touches of
watercolor pencils in a 
watercolor journal 
, using large dishes watercolor brushes 
. 